#PainPetition aims to improve pain management services in the UK and we need your signature
I am never asked how my pain is by my GP even if I go about my pain. When I see my surgeon it is usually because I am suffering and he asks me where the pain is and what type of pain but there is no pain measurement and he rarely touches me which I find surprising!
Chronic pain patient
Is this something you experience when you visit your doctor?
How would you feel if next time you go to see your first-contact doctor they ask whether you are in pain and what effect this has on your daily life? Would you feel more assured that your pain is managed and treated more effectively if your pain was measured regularly and the results recorded and included in a pain management plan? Do you feel asking about pain should be as routine as taking a temperature or blood pressure?
Jean Gaffin, Pain UK’s Pain Champion for 2013, thinks each of these questions should be answered YES. Jean has started an online petition calling for the UK Department of Health, along with organisations responsible for setting standards of care, to improve the way people in pain are treated.
You can sign the e-petition by visiting the following link: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/58377
Follow up the campaign on Twitter using hashtag #painpetition
Jean said: “Many people living with chronic pain suffer in silence – even when talking to their doctor or other healthcare professional. People in pain may find it difficult to talk about it when they are with a health or care professional. Patients should be asked whether they are in pain, and how it affects their daily living. Pain should be measured and the results recorded and included in a pain management plan which would include self-management.
If asking about pain was as routine as taking a temperature or blood pressure people living with chronic pain could be helped routinely and regularly to manage their pain and have it treated effectively instead of suffering in silence.”
Pain should be measured regularly. In asthma patients the respiratory flow is measured and in diabetes, blood sugars are measured, so why is nothing measured for pain patients?
Chronic pain patient
The petition needs 100,000 signatures to be eligible for a debate in the House of Commons and 10,000 signatures before it will prompt a response from the Government. So far, 2,130 people have added their support , however we are aiming for as many as possible. The petition closes in December.
Jean added: “There are over 14 million of people in England who live with chronic pain, and if each of them signed the petition the UK government would receive a very clear signal from the pain community. We’ve only got 4 months to move it closer to the required number of signatures. We are therefore asking you: please join us in supporting this important cause, sign the petition and pass on the word. Let’s take care of the UK pain services and shape the way we want to have chronic pain treated.”
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I am ambivalent about this campaign: pain is a symptom which is intermingled with emotion. There are many underlying causes and contributing factors. It is not analogous to diabetes and asthma, nor is it linked directly to outcome as is hypertension. Statements by individual people who consider that they have not been dealt with well by their GPs are not themselves a reason to start a petition, without knowing what it is that needs to be changed or have more funding. Pain clinics have been in existence for a generation or more. Whether or not more are needed to fulfill unmet need itself merits proper research. People whose pain has been well managed will not be contributors to this campaign, so it is inherently biased.
In reply to Michael Snaith , yes, ‘ sadly’ to a degree, I agree with you, but I feel there are areas where looking at pain must be seen diffirently and just because we can’t put our finger on the cause of the pain, must not mean that we give in to not looking again at the patient, but maybe with another fame of mind, or as I believe there may be a way that the body, (brain or mind) is trying to communicate and tell the immediate mind as the subconscious has not been heard or understood at all ,or as in many cases the will to try to understand is lacking because there are no kudos in possibly studying patients who may be difficult, because communication is confusing for them ,or that they are misunderstanding what their body is saying to them, or it may be that listening to their body proper’ is alien to them.
I bet if there was a study, where in cases where a Doctor has said to a patient ,if only you had came to me earlier, and said patient dies, well what if that patient misread or did not listen proper to their body’s voice.
I know it’s not something that easily springs to mind for Doctors as they are led to believe that pain and the cause will be so obvious . But what if there are signals from the subconscious that we fail to understand or are failing to hear, or that some Doctors laugh at the possibility.
What if the subconscious, if on being not listened to, manifest’s itself in pain, or ‘ well I hope you get the drift, For there must be an area, surely’ where pain manifest’s itself to communicate something, in that a serious illness is picked up by the brain, how then may it tell the conscious .mind.
Yes I know it may be Balderdash, But How can we tell either way, unless we open our minds to a possibility of the mind trying to communicate, if it has not been heard in it’s usual fashion.